My girlfriend has a white macbook.. Today she noticed a crack in her wrist pad where the top of the laptop closes onto the bottom. She is freaking out b/c she does not want to have to pay $130+ for a whole new case. Does anyone know if apple will replace these without applecare?_________________13" 2.26 Macbook Pro
G4 1.5 MacMini
16GB iPhone 3GS
120GB iPod

At the school I work for we have a few hundred macbooks, almost all of them exhibit this defect. Whenever we send one out for repair for a hard drive or something else it usually will comeback with a new top case. Whatever apple used for the top case and bezel around the screen was a bad choice. Maybe if they used a rubber pad instead of the same plastic for the bumpers on the bezel they wouldn't have this issue. I think this is another reason why apple has shifted to the aluminum case.

Maybe you should call ahead to see if they have the part on hand before you drive out.

You should be so lucky - for me it's an hour to the airport, a one-hour flight, and either an hour and a half in a taxi in Bangkok traffic to the store, or 35 minutes on the subway

Or nine hours in a car all the way...

You should be so lucky. For me, its 15 minutes to the nearest Apple store. But thats only half the battle. I have to spend time deciding which Apple store I want to go to. I have close stores north, south, east and west of me. So, its the decision of just wanting to get to the closest store if I want something fast. Or do I want to do some upscale shopping while I'm at it and take a drive to the Apple Store at Stanford. Possibly I want to spend a leisurely afternoon having brunch at an outdoor cafe in San Francisco. If I do, I head to the Chestnut Street store. And if they don't have what I want, there are two other stores in San Francisco, so there is no worry there. Maybe a nice drive up the coast on a warm California afternoon is called for. That would mean a drive through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Corte Madera. I could go on and on here but I wont. As you can see, for me and others on this board, getting to an Apple store is no easy task!